Maria Martinez, the corporate vice president in charge of the big Microsoft Services division, is leaving the company. Microsoft confirmed the move in response to our inquiry this morning, saying Martinez would be replaced by Kathleen Hogan, current corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Customer Service & Support

Microsoft’s assets available for employee benefits fell by $1.4 billion in 2008, shrinking by more than a quarter from the year before.

The Redmond-based company’s funds available to pay out benefits dropped 26 percent to $4.01 billion in the year ended Dec. 31, according to a document filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2007, Microsoft’s available assets for benefits amounted $5.43 billion.

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6 Comments

Assets available to pay benefits doesn’t equate to lower benefits paid out. What would be interesting is if the drop in asset value had a short or long term effect on the maximal expenditure on employee benefits from said assets and whether employee benefits actually, in reality, suffered.

No. You either don’t know, or you’re misrepresenting the quoted article on purpose:

shows that Microsoft employee benefits fell by a staggering 26% compared to last year.

Implying that benefits *paid* to them fell or were reduced. Implying that Microsoft employees are somehow receiving less health or retirement coverage. Neither of which is the case, as Charles Oliver said. You then paste the usual self-referential gunk (contract staff rate cuts) that is completely unrelated to what you’re saying. You are aware that no company in the planet pays benefits to contract staff, right?

So you either don’t understand the article you’re quoting (which means you should not use it to begin with) or you’re lying. Which is it?

contextfree Reply:June 30th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

I don’t think he’s lying, I think he’s bullshitting in Harry Frankfurt’s sense, i.e. he doesn’t really know or care whether the things he posts are true or not, their truth or falsity is simply irrelevant and the only thing that matters is whether they are unfavorable to Microsoft. Basically the corporate PR worldview, just in reverse.

Lying? You trolls have not been paying attention. here are links to other M$ failures. You know, like M$’s amazing $60 billion cash pile dissapearing act, or the loss of 5,000 employees here, 2,000 employees there. How’s a company that’s running out of money because they have abused employees, customers and investors alike supposed to reward employees? That’s right, with an axe. More than 10,000 people have already felt it.

You trolls can spin, slander and otherwise bullshit all day, none of it will do M$ any good. Given how negative the reaction is to your constant harassment, it’s a wonder M$ has not pulled the plug on you guys. They should put every resource they had into software ten years ago. Whey they keep people like you around is a mystery.

The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again